The Misremembered Man (24 page)

“I’m pleased to hear that, Rose. Thank you for explaining things to me. And I hope we meet again soon.”

And with that Rose shot off in the direction of the toilets to impart the good news. Lydia gathered up her things—just as Daphne was coming through the lounge. She went to meet her; Daphne was frowning. She threw confused looks to where her friend had been sitting, noting the vacant table.

“Where’s—?”

Lydia grasped her elbow and steered her back the way she had come.

“I’ll explain in the car,” she said.

“It didn’t go well?”

“Yes and no. It was—”

Lydia stopped. Somebody had tapped her shoulder. She turned and caught her breath.

“Now, Miss Devine,” said a little bald man, “you know what it feels like to be left in the lurch! Doeth unto others as you would have them doeth unto you. Luke six, verse thirty-one. I am a Christian gentleman myself—which is more than can be said for some!”

Frank Xavier McPrunty straightened his cravat, adjusted his spectacles and marched triumphantly out into the sunshine, leaving both ladies staring after him in astonishment.

D
aphne drove Lydia to the hospital, listening intently and trying to suppress a giggle as her friend related the strange story of Mr. McCloone. By the time she entered the County General, Lydia believed she had recovered sufficiently from that very odd experience to face the sobering business of her mother’s condition.

Three weeks had passed since Elizabeth Devine’s admittance, and in that time Lydia had become used to the routine of visiting and sitting by the bed. Although she would not admit it to herself, she felt in her heart that this ritual of vigil-keeping would, somehow, continue for a long time. The hours she sat at the bedside were very precious to her. She quickened her step down the long corridor, regretting that Mr. James McCloone and his mysterious antics had delayed her unduly.

But when she pushed open the door to her mother’s room, an unexpected sight met her. The bed was empty. Someone coughed politely, and she turned to find Sister Milligan in the doorway.

“Where is she?” Dread was descending on Lydia. Her hand went to her heart, as if to slow its beating.

“I’m very sorry, Miss Devine. Your mother passed away an hour ago.”

“No!” Lydia saw the stern, implacable face. She wanted to scream at the nurse for being so heartless. “She can’t have! Why are you saying such a thing, such a callous thing?”

Sister Milligan took her firmly by the arm, well used to dealing with the bafflement of the bereaved, and led her to the armchair.

“We rang you several times but we couldn’t reach you.”

Lydia went from shocked silence to disbelief, then to despair, as she tried to absorb the stern but sympathetic words. What she’d feared the most had become a reality. The cold, hard fact was hers, and only hers, to deal with. The death of a loved one left the bereaved with no choice, no escape or hiding place—only the searing, raw pain of loss.

She floundered in this newfound knowledge, swaying back and forth, sobbing uncontrollably. The full impact of her dereliction—wasting time in that silly hotel, meeting that silly man—was taking hold of her to a high degree. The whys and reprimands rained down, as a tremendous feeling of guilt swept over her. How could she have been so foolish, so selfish?

And so she wept on and on, the room and the nurse and her whole world dissolving and drifting farther and farther away—an untethered balloon in a vast gray emptiness rising higher and higher. She heard the ambient sounds of the hospital and the world beyond the window, a seemingly random blend of lives being lived, and knew in those fearful, helpless moments that she’d reached a turning point. A point that, no matter how painful, was lit by the knowledge that she would only undergo it once. The loss of a mother is a singular and incomparable event. Such understanding gave relief. But oh so very, very little.

She did not know how long she sat in the vacant room with the indifferent nurse, or at what point she’d blacked out.

All future attempts she’d make to recollect those events—between her mother’s death and burial—would remain misted over and obscured, as if seen through sun-thronged glass; blindingly real but never fully recalled or understood. Perhaps it was best that way. She was thankful for the comfort of amnesia.

The Reverend Spencer, her father’s much younger successor, conducted the funeral service. He was a tall, thin man who held himself like a length of driftwood, his vestments seeming to weigh as heavily on him as his solemn office.

Lydia and Gladys sat in the front pew, and before them lay Elizabeth—wife, sister, mother—all her earthly titles stilled to that one last image: the mahogany casket.

Around them were disposed Mrs. Devine’s elderly friends, spread out and brought together with their memories and tears, singing their hymns in cracked voices, their faces sagging with the knowledge that the time left to them, too, was finite.

At the graveside Lydia and Gladys stood arm in arm, watching the rain splashing down on the casket, their eyes misting with tears as Elizabeth was slowly lowered to her rest.

It was somehow appropriate that the sun did not shine, that the birds did not sing, that what should have been a bright August afternoon had given itself over to a wintry, doom-laden grayness. God himself was in sympathy. Why should the day smile when there was so much sorrow to be borne?

After the funeral, Gladys insisted on remaining for a week with Lydia at Elmwood. Even though her niece would have preferred to have faced the inevitable loneliness of her new situation by herself, and as soon as possible, she knew that to voice her true feelings would be churlish. All attempts by such well-meaning people—Daphne with her invitations to lunch, Beatrice Bohilly’s offer to help her dispose of her mother’s clothes, the young vicar’s words of consolation—made her appreciate that she had real friends and that perhaps the empty space her mother’s passing had left behind might well be the door to a less fearful place, where she was free to be herself and not just an adjunct, an accessory. After all, with her mother’s death came the death of dependence and the birth of an anxious freedom. Freedom. Was it not what she’d always craved?

“Perhaps you should take time off school, Lily dear.”

Gladys sat in the chintz drawing room, in Elizabeth’s favorite armchair, a glass of gin and tonic—her nightcap—on the occasional table, within easy reach.

She looked like a voluptuous concubine in a shogun’s palace: resplendent in a crimson kimono patterned with copper dragons and golden serpents. On her feet she wore frail mules crested with waving plumes of ostrich feather. Lydia stared down at them now as her aunt spoke.

“Take time off,” she said again. “After all, they can get a replacement for a week or two, until you get back on your feet.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Work would take my mind off things.”

Lydia had one week left of her school vacation. She sat twisting a button on her cardigan, the cup of cocoa which Gladys had prepared for her going cold on the coffee table. She was caught between not wanting to appear helpless—in which case Gladys would take it upon herself to remain another week, a scenario she did not want to even imagine—and not wishing to seem ungrateful.

“You could stay a couple of weeks with me,” Gladys said. “It would lift your spirits.” She put the ebony cigarette holder to her lips and inhaled deeply, then laid it across the ashtray.

“Gladys, you know I couldn’t do that. Our holiday with you was the last my mother and I had.” She took a hankie from her sleeve as the tears started again. “The Ocean Spray would be too soon and too painful for me.”

“Yes, well, I suppose you’re right. But you know the sooner you come to terms with these things the better. It doesn’t do to mope about. After all, you’re a big girl now.”

“Am I not allowed to grieve?” Lydia glared, not caring for her aunt’s tone.

Gladys shrugged. “Grieve all you like, Lily dear. It won’t bring her back.” She took up the cigarette again.

“What a heartless thing to say. I know you and Mother didn’t see eye to eye, but grief is a natural reaction to the death of someone you love. Where is your sorrow, Gladys? After all, she was your sister.”

“My sorrow is my business! And yes, she was a sister in the sense that all she seemed able to do was criticize and try to dominate me. The problem was one of jealousy, I fear. Elizabeth was plain and dull and I was, well, shall we say more sophisticated.”

Lydia was shocked. “What a mean, selfish thing to say!”

Gladys tightened the kimono about her, drained the remains of her glass and stubbed out the cigarette. She held Lydia with a contemptuous look.

“I wouldn’t be so high and mighty—”

“
Me
high and mighty?”

“You know nothing!” Gladys snapped. “The truth is always difficult. Now that you’re alone, you’ll have to learn about things the hard way.”

“You’re cruel.”

“And you’re naive!” She got up. “I’m going to bed. I have a long journey ahead of me tomorrow.”

Lydia looked at her aunt’s feet, at the feathered mules and lacquered toenails, and decided she really could not take too seriously anything this woman said.

“I may be naive, Gladys, but at least I act my age.”

“Oh, you do that all right—and look where it’s got you!” Gladys’s bosom rose and fell rapidly under the silk kimono. She would not be reprimanded by this flat-chested little spinster.

Lydia looked up at her, wondering suddenly how this brash, gaudy woman could ever have been her dear mother’s sister.

“My mother never liked you and I understand why.”

Gladys snorted. “You don’t know the half of it!”

She rustled to the door, then turned.

“By the way, a man telephoned for you the other evening. I forgot to mention it. A James Something-or-other. Claimed he met you through a newspaper ad or something equally preposterous.”

Lydia could feel herself blush. She decided then and there that she really detested her aunt and was on the verge of ordering her out, but knew that any such move would only serve to compound her guilt.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, and that’s exactly what I told him. I said that I could not imagine a niece of mine going to such tawdry lengths to find herself a man. So I told him he had the wrong number and to please not bother this house again.”

Gladys pulled the door behind her and swept up the stairs, leaving Lydia devastated by the callousness of her timing. There was nothing left for her to do but bury her face in her hands and burst into tears.

The morning of Gladys’s departure was strained but cordial. The differences aired the previous evening lay like an open wound between the two women.

Neither of them had any wish to probe or examine why the damage they’d wrought on the other still hurt so much. Apologies were not forthcoming. Time would heal, so they did not refer to their quarrel, deciding that it was best to let things be.

Elizabeth’s death had brought a new set of rules into play. Lydia understood that she did not need her aunt to be a player in this new game. She, Lydia, was in control now and would conduct her life on her own terms. She had been answerable to her mother out of duty, but now she was answerable to no one. Aunt Gladys was superfluous; tolerable at the end of a telephone line, which perhaps was enough.

When she kissed her goodbye that morning, she decided that that was how she wanted things to be for the present, and Gladys knew somehow that, for the time being, her comfort and support would not be required.

Lydia turned back to the empty house and shut the front door behind her.

She stood in the hallway until the last notes of Gladys’s car had died away. Then silence descended again and the whole house held an air of heavy aftermath, as if she, Lydia, were the only survivor of a nuclear catastrophe. For the first time, she truly understood how it felt to be alone; to lean on her deepest, most meaningful self. The walls of Elmwood would be of little comfort in the days to come.

She stood for a while, mustering strength, then wandered through her “motherless” home, going from room to room, testing her courage, hoping she’d be strong enough to face the void. She felt as though she had journeyed through a darkened tunnel and had suddenly come upon this strange, bleak place, shaped to the contours of a new absence, but shimmering still with a supernatural presence: her dead mother’s presence.

In the living room she struggled with the echoes Elizabeth had left behind: the partially knitted sweater in the tapestry bag, the half-read novel on the windowsill, the television shows ringed in red for what was to be her last evening’s viewing.

Lydia wept again as she looked on all these things, and came to understand that grief could not be fought, only lived through. Like some Greek tragedy, it would end at some stage, but only when the gods thought fit.

She sat down in her mother’s chair and looked with sadness at the knitting. She was about to pick it up when the phone rang. She took a deep breath and prepared to answer it in a steady voice.

“Good morning.”

“Miss Devine? Lydia Devine?” The man’s voice was brisk and businesslike.

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Charles Brown, here. Brown and Kane. I was your mother’s solicitor. I’m terribly sorry for your loss, Miss Devine.”

“Thank you, Mr. Brown.”

“Terribly unexpected. Your mother was such a fine lady. Such a shame.”

Lydia didn’t quite know how to respond, so she thanked him again and waited for him to state his business.

“Perhaps you’d be kind enough to call in, Miss Devine. I have your mother’s will. It’s fairly straightforward. Not putting pressure on you, mind, but in my experience it’s often best to get these things over with as soon as possible.”

“Yes indeed. I can come at whatever time suits you, Mr. Brown,” Lydia found herself saying.

“Splendid. Shall we say half past three next Friday?”

“Yes, fine.” She scribbled the date and time in the desk diary.

“Good, I’ll get my secretary to send you confirmation in the post.”

“Thank you, Mr. Brown.” Lydia prepared to hang up.

“Oh, just one more thing, Miss Devine.” The solicitor hesitated. “Besides the will, there’s a letter for you.”

“A letter…from whom?” Lydia could not say why she suddenly felt uneasy.

“Your mother left it with me some time ago, with instructions that it was only to be passed to you on her death.”

“Oh…I see.”

“I’ll expect to see you on Friday, then. Goodbye, Miss Devine.”

With that the line went dead, and Lydia was left once more in the echoing hallway, with the image of her mother and the mysterious letter, wondering what exactly this new, untested future could hold.